


The Moon and the Stars

by Mono



Category: South Park
Genre: Camping, Hopeful Ending, Love Triangles, M/M, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2235249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mono/pseuds/Mono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whilst out camping with the boys, Kyle confesses something to Cartman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moon and the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first South Park fanfiction, my first Kyman fanfiction and my first fanfiction ever posted to AO3. I've not done any real creative writing in so long. Criticism and comments would be really appreciated!

Cartman watches the light from the fire dance across Kyle’s face, casting half his profile into a shadow. 

The fire makes his already intense green eyes look like they’re also burning brightly. Neither of them speak. They both gaze into the leaping flames, while Cartman occasionally shoots the other boy a few little glances – unbeknownst to the pensive redhead, who stares at the fire like it’s trying to tell him something. The summer night wears on, silence settling around them like a blanket on the hillside, no sound but the faint crackling of the campfire and the soft breathing of Stan, Kenny and Butters sleeping inside the shared tent.

Cartman, unable to adapt to the uncomfortable rocky ground beneath the floor of their tent, had crept outside (not before giving Butters a Hitler of course, for old times’ sake). To his surprise, he found Kyle still sitting on the log by the campfire. He’d been the last to go to bed, saying he’d stay up for a bit and then put the fire out. That was two hours ago, and he was still here, long after everyone had fallen asleep. He didn’t blink at the prospect of Cartman joining him, didn’t seem surprised that Cartman was still awake, just patted the space beside him on the log. Half an hour of silly squabbling later, a companionable quiet has enveloped them both. Cartman tosses tiny twigs into the fire. Kyle absent-mindedly twists a flame-coloured curl around his finger, not once averting his gaze from the charring, crumbling logs.

A few minutes of silence later, and Kyle is eventually the one to break it.

“I think I like Stan,” he murmurs, eventually.

It’s as though someone has taken a hold of Cartman’s heart and begun squeezing it very tightly. Suddenly it hurts to breathe.

Kyle lets out a long, shaky breath, leaning back to stare up at the night sky. Before, there had been nothing; the smoke from the fire simply floated up and disappeared into the blackness. But now, clouds fade back to reveal an almost perfect full-moon, bright enough that Kyle appears to be in a spotlight, and he smiles up at it, face brimming with some indescribable emotion. Cartman tears his eyes away, finding the sight unbearable.

He’d known this day was coming. There had to come a time when he couldn’t keep on pretending. He just never imagined it would hurt this much.

Their bizarre relationship had evolved over the years to a point where they could find an equal within one another, and their back-and-forth insults held far less venom than they did when they were children. At fourteen years old, they are arguably still children, holding on to their last fragments of innocence. But it’s no longer unusual for them to seek each other’s company, be it playing video games, going to the movies, or working on a class project together, despite the inevitable bickering. It’s been a month since the end of middle school; the cold reality of high school is fast approaching. There was a safety net in their childhood rivalry, when Cartman’s clumsy, vulnerable affection had been kept under wraps. As soon as they’d begun fighting less, and he’d allowed himself to reveal a corner of his heart, Kyle had taken it whole-heartedly.

But where has it gotten him? Sitting beside said childhood rival, listening to him pining for his best friend who is snoring barely ten feet away, having to pretend as though he isn’t falling apart inside.

Seconds of silence pass. Cartman continues to stare into the fire, wondering if it supposedly has some enlightening effect that caused Kyle to say something so… so…

“Cartman?”

Cartman looks up, meeting Kyle’s eyes. They are anxious, heavy with something unspoken, perhaps concern, or a need for approval or advice, but it feels like they are burning into Cartman with the same intensity he had whilst looking into the fire.

“Mm?” Cartman manages, trying to appear unconcerned.

Kyle gives him a strange look, leaving Cartman feeling exposed and nervous that Kyle will figure him out.

“…Aren’t you going to rip on me?”

“…”

“I just admitted to you I like a guy. I, I like Stan,” he lets roll off his tongue, feeling his cheeks become warm, oblivious that those three words are like a punch in the gut to the boy sitting next to him. “Aren’t you going to call me a fag, or something?”

Cartman snorts in disgust. “Sure, Kyle. You’re a fag. You’re a faggy gypsy Jersey Jew, who likes a certified faggy hippie freak who loves getting his balls trampled on by the most annoying, boring girl to ever walk the face of the earth. Quick; alert the paparazzi.”

Kyle rolls his eyes, but Cartman catches him suppressing a small smile and a shake of his head. Cartman’s heart sinks even lower, if that’s possible. These days, he fails even to convince himself with his half-formed, half-hearted insults. It doesn’t occur to him, however, how grateful Kyle actually is to hear those words in that moment.

For a few minutes, neither of them speak again. Cartman, for one, doesn’t trust himself to. Kyle appears to be thinking about something.

“Thank you,” he says, unexpectedly. When he looks over and catches Cartman’s puzzled expression, he smiles and sighs. “For not making a big deal out of it, or anything.”

Cartman grunts, whatever. He really isn’t in the mood for a heart-to-heart, which would be incredibly gay – gayer even than Kyle coming out – but Kyle for some reason feels the need to continue.

“I… I guess I kind of feel like I owe you some thanks, is all. I mean, if it weren’t for you, I might not have known that I… that I don’t like girls.”

Cartman makes no comment, waiting for Kyle’s beloved explanation as to how Cartman, of all people, helped him figure out he’s gay. It’s not as if he likes Cartman, or anything. That would just be fucking stupid.

It’s worse than he could have imagined: discovering Kyle does in fact swing for the same team after all, but still doesn’t see Cartman that way, and never will. At least while Kyle’s preferences were ambiguous to rest of the world, Cartman was able to pretend something could have come of them in the future, but that illusion has been abruptly shattered.  
“You remember that new girl in the fourth grade? Nichole? She was Token’s girlfriend for a while?”

How could he forget.

“Oh yeah, the black chick? Didn’t she move away to Oregon or something?”

“Of course you’d remember her for her skin color only, you racist shithead. Well, when you sabotaged our date with that ridiculous speech about you and me being a couple,” Kyle pauses to narrow his eyes at Cartman, who smirks back, “I knew you were just being a dick because you didn’t like mixed-race couples, but something in your bullshit speech got to me.”

Cartman holds his breath.

“That bit where you said I could keep going around pretending that I liked girls… I don’t know why, but that made me feel really strange. Like you’d seen right through me. You didn’t… you didn’t know, did you?” Kyle says doubtfully. Cartman snorts.

“Kyle, please. With that ass? You might as well have been Mr Slave’s disciple.”

Kyle smacks his arm, but lets it go in favor of continuing his little self-discovery monologue. He doesn’t seem concerned at the fact Cartman has implied he’s been checking out his ass.

“I didn’t know then that I was gay, I don’t know if I even suspected it before, but that little comment suddenly made me think. Up until then I hadn’t been able to describe my feelings towards girls. I’ve… never really been that interested, but I didn’t chalk it up to much. I just assumed it was because I was too young to really understand romance, and of course I was, but then all boys were interested in girls by that age.”

Kyle pauses to sigh, while Cartman tries to remember being interested in girls at that age, and fails. Girls are alien, icky creatures that are best avoided. Okay, there was Wendy, for a portion of their childhood. Despite her being an annoying feminist eco hippie activist, he was attracted to her intelligence and her anger when she exploded at him for being a bigoted piece of shit, and he loved to wind her up. He reflects now that both she and Kyle had that in common. They were the only two kids in his grade who’d been a real challenge. Ironically, both of them appeared to be in favor of Stan, who is a passive, apathetic, uninteresting asshole. (Though Wendy did dump him at the start of middle school, for a more intellectual, driven boy from North Park. Stan still goes on about her even now. Stupid fucking hippie.)

But since Wendy, and briefly Patty (mainly because she kinda looked like Wendy), Cartman hasn’t been interested in a girl for years. Not that he’d let anyone notice this, of course. He doesn’t want people knowing. It’s none of their goddamn business, after all. Maybe he’d tell Kyle, one day. But no-one else.

Kyle continues. “After that, I thought about it more and considered maybe there was something to it, this feeling. I went on a date with Heidi back in fifth grade, but even though she was nice, completely fine, I just didn’t… it was like, the whole experience was a chore, as if I was doing it to meet certain expectations. And then… in seventh grade…” Kyle’s voice changes, trailing off to a whisper. Cartman doesn’t need three guesses to know what he’s thinking about. “He’s always been good-looking, I guess, and really nice, and supportive, and the best friend I could ever ask for, but one day, it was like I’d been struck by lightning… I saw him in a different light.”

Cartman swallows, struggling with the large lump forming in his throat, and he wishes Kyle’s description doesn’t so accurately mirror his own feelings. Ever since elementary school… it’s not fair, damn it. It’s not fucking fair.

“Yeah ‘kay, Kyle, you wanna suck Stan’s balls. Like everyone in South Park doesn’t already fucking know that. This conversation is getting really fucking boring,” Cartman grits out, trying not to let his voice crack. He picks up a handful of dry leaves from around his feet and starts shredding them aimlessly, tossing the debris into the fire and watching the sparks leap.

“Goddamit, Cartman, do you have to be such an asshole?” Kyle snaps, flushing, lowering his voice when he remembers the others sleeping in the tent. “I don’t know why I bothered telling you, anyway. You’ll probably just screw me over.”

“Ha. I’m not going to tell the hippie on you, Jesus. Like I haven’t got anything better to do,” Cartman huffs, prodding the fire with a longer stick he finds on the ground.

“You usually haven’t, fatass,” Kyle mutters, but he drops it. He instead resumes looking up at the sky. Cartman follows his gaze, glancing over the almost-full moon, then makes an effort to seek out the tiny, twinkling stars.

Further away, scattered, not as obvious to the naked eye – but still there.

Larger, fiercer, brighter than the moon could ever be.

“It’s late,” Cartman murmurs. For a moment, Kyle says nothing, just keeps staring upwards, his lips pressed in a thin line. But when Cartman starts to stand up from the log, he feels a hand grip his wrist. Cartman blinks, surprised by the sudden contact. Kyle finally looks away from the sky and his deep green eyes lock with Cartman’s own hazel ones. Their faces are close, and Cartman fights not to lower his gaze to Kyle’s lips, which are quivering. Kyle’s hand on his arm feels white-hot, burning the skin.

“I…” Kyle whispers. In the quiet, Cartman hopes Kyle can’t hear the thudding of his heart. Kyle seems unable to express himself, and the words that are ripped from him sound odd, disjointed. “I – I just – I wish things could always be like this – I mean –” he blurts. He swallows, calms himself, then tries again. “I just wish that… that I could go on pretending, you know?” he manages, searching Cartman’s eyes almost desperately. He looks like he wants to say more, and struggles to find the words. But he doesn’t have to. Cartman understands.

He wishes he could keep pretending, too. That Kyle will one day acknowledge him, just like Kyle wishes the same from Stan. He wishes he could keep pretending that Kyle will be around forever, and that they’ll always be close, and that they’ll all stay best friends even when high school graduation is nothing but a distant memory. But he knows this is probably a hopeless dream. High school will tear them apart, separate them into new cliques, determine their social status for the next four years, thus deciding whether they will live in heaven or hell, and push them in the directions they’re bound to follow for the rest of their lives.

Kyle is clever. He’ll probably ace his final exams, get into a decent college and train to be a doctor, or an engineer. Not a banker, as amusing as that sounds to Cartman. Kyle has always tried to distance himself from Jewish stereotypes.

Stan will probably become part of the high school elite: quarterback hero, tall dark and handsome, girls fawning all over him, breaking Kyle’s heart. He’ll party too hard and then go on to community college somewhere in the state, doing something sickeningly sensitive like environmental studies or childcare, like the stupid hippie that he is.

Kenny has already started smoking, and currently has a punk girlfriend called Nancy. When they start freshman year he’ll probably dump her in favor of fooling around with sophomore girls. His grades will probably be average, at best. Not because he’s unintelligent, but because he doesn't see the point. He’ll hang out with the stoner kids, maybe go to a few parties with Stan; Kenny has always been popular enough. He’ll drop out in junior year to start working, doing something predictably poor like working at a gas station.

Butters is dorky and gullible, so he’ll probably get teased a lot, but Butters has that Hawaiian spirit and a tendency for optimism. He’ll be fine. He’ll probably take all the art classes, join the Glee club, a dance group, get the leading role in the school production. Delightfully faggy but highly appropriate for him.

Cartman doesn't have a plan for his own future. He likes to live in the moment. But now he’s scared, genuinely frightened, with the future staring him right in the face and he doesn’t know what will happen. Kyle is right before him, but Cartman can almost literally feel him slipping away, and realizes it’s because Kyle has suddenly relinquished his grip on Cartman’s wrist, as though he’s on fire. Cartman realizes too late that he was staring at Kyle’s face the whole time he was having that long thought process.

Kyle looks ready to shake his head and say “Forget it”, but before he can, Cartman, emboldened, puts his arm around Kyle’s shoulders. Kyle looks pleasantly surprised, and Cartman needs to say something, anything.

“We’ll all stick around,” he blurts out. “We’ll all still be friends.” He says this with forced determination, willing it to happen. Kyle smiles at him sadly.

They watch the fire some more, the flames having died down to ankle level, and Kyle suggests getting some sleep. Cartman agrees. They extinguish the fire, plunging their little bubble into the dim blue moonlight, which is fading fast as the clouds shift to cover half of it up again. Kyle reaches for Cartman in the dark, finding his wrist and guiding him back to the tent. Cartman relishes it for as long as he can, until they’re both at their sleeping bags and he drops his hand back to his side as Kyle lets him go. They both settle down, only half zipping themselves in, as it’s a warm night.

 

Kenny is sprawled inside the tent entrance, atop his sleeping bag, opting to use his parka hood as a comforter. Cartman and Kyle had to be careful not to step on his hands when coming back into the tent. Butters has shifted in his sleep, face half pressed into his pillow, mouth open and drooling and his ass curved slightly in the air, looking as though he’s offering himself to some sugar daddy. Cartman silently points this out to Kyle, who stuffs his knuckles in his mouth, biting down a laugh. He looks in Stan’s direction, wistfully. Stan is curled in a foetal position, thumb resting against his lips. Cartman feels a surge of annoyance, but when he looks back at Kyle, who is smiling at him again, his irritation ebbs away.

“Goodnight, Cartman,” Kyle whispers, his eyes already fluttering shut.

“Night, Kyle,” Cartman murmurs back, suddenly very aware that he’s sleeping right next to him. He feels like an idiot for not noticing this before, and wonders how the hell he’s going to sleep now with Kyle’s body turned towards him.

He continues to lie facing Kyle, noting his parted lips and the way his eyelashes rest against his cheek, until he can’t take it anymore and has to turn away if he has any hope in sleeping tonight.

He’s just drifting off, when he feels a lithe arm snake around his waist, pulling him closer. Cartman’s eyes widen slightly, tensing when he feels Kyle’s breath tickle the back of his neck, his lips so close to his skin, oh Jesus – but he relaxes when he realises Kyle is asleep, his breathing even and heavy.

Cartman smirks when he imagines Kyle’s shock in the morning, predicting a sharp whack to the head as the sneaky Jew rat tries to call him a pervert and make out like it’s his fault. But Cartman decides it’ll be worth it.

Kyle’s not quite pressed up against him, but Cartman still feels the heat of his body, and for the first time that night, he feels himself drifting to sleep with ease. Stan and high school both feel so far away right now, and Cartman is suddenly filled with some renewed hope, that maybe he doesn’t have to pretend anymore, that maybe he and Kyle can still be something, maybe even something he dares not hope for too hard in case it all comes crashing down on him later. But in this moment, he slips peacefully into unconsciousness, imagining Kyle as the sun, far away but burning brightly enough for Cartman to feel the warm rays engulfing him.

The moon slips closer and closer towards the horizon as the night wears on, but the clouds peel back to reveal the hidden cosmos, glittering with millions upon billions of twinkling stars.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first South Park fanfiction, my first Kyman fanfiction and my first fanfiction ever posted to AO3. I've not done any real creative writing in so long. Criticism and comments would be really appreciated!


End file.
